U.S. drug deaths dipped in 2018, but cocaine and meth overdoses rose
The rise of stimulants is the latest drug trend, but not the last
The stories that Judith Feinberg hears from people with substance use disorder are riddled with loss: of jobs, opportunity, security, dignity. “People really are struggling to see that they have a viable future,” Feinberg says. “Then you take a drug … and you don’t care until you need the drug again.”
For years, that drug was very likely an opioid. But Feinberg, a physician at West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown who studies infectious diseases and injection drug use, recently has seen shifts in the addictive substances used. And it’s occurring not just in West Virginia — which has the highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the nation, at 51.5 deaths per 100,000 people — but across the country, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported January 30.
Fueled by a plentiful supply, people have increasingly been turning to such stimulants as cocaine and methamphetamine — so much so that the rates of overdose deaths for those drugs each surpassed that of prescription opioids in 2018.
There’s a small bit of hope: After two decades of rising numbers, around 3,000 fewer people overall died of a drug overdose in 2018 than in 2017. But with 67,367 deaths, 2018 ranks as the second-worst year for drug overdoses in U.S. history. It’s too soon to say whether the nudge downward is a blip or the start of a meaningful drop.